Orwellian, But Which Orwell ?
Orwellian is not an adjective to use lightly. 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is much more than it seems. And a great deal can be missed in pursuit of simple ways to describe the contemporary world.
When we use the term Orwellian, we usually mean the Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) of disinformation, surveillance, and torture.
Google's Ngram Viewer illustrates that we can't get enough of the adjective. It shows an initial spike in usage roughly two decades after Orwell published the novel, and again as 1984 approached. Since 2001, usage has entered an explosive growth phase, peaking in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis before attempting a new high with Donald Trump's first term. I have attempted to trace these changes in more depth using the frame of popular music here.
Ignore, for now, that we often misuse Orwellian when we invoke it to do the heavy lifting on the right or the left of the political spectrum. Overuse has a much more worrying impact: it tames Nineteen Eighty-Four's many mysteries, contradictions, and horrors. It leaves the novel feeling somehow safely sanitised, distant, and dull.
Take, for example, the alleged hero of the piece, Winston. Take especially, his rape fantasy.
Did you miss that?
Go back and take a look. It’s very early in the novel (in the first section) at the Two Minutes Hate. We watch Winston transfer his hatred from the images on the screen before him to a girl in the crowd. (See [The Complete Works of George Orwell](https://drjwood.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/20250327145103822iOS.jpg), volume 9 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1987), p.17). Unnamed here, but it's Julia. Girl.
Winston imagines flogging her with a truncheon as she lies tied and naked. He fills her full of arrows (a cheap metaphor). He ravishes her (a cheap verb). And then, at the moment of orgasm (one assumes his, but one never quite knows with this fantasy), a throat is slit—poor old, downtrodden Winston.
So, which Orwell is your Orwellian describing?
The worn-out and increasingly meaningless Orwell of 2+2 not equaling 4? Or the Orwell who recognised the permanent possibility of hatred, prejudice and violence in everyone?